Forrester Consulting recently polled 158 IT professionals (director level and above) in the U.S. and the U.K. to get a sense of how their digital transformation initiatives were progressing. The study reveals that CIOs and other business leaders are struggling to get their content to come along for the ride. Although 70% of respondents consider digital transformation a top priority, only 14% said their collective content is currently available electronically. On the other hand, a Gartner report revealed that 70% of business transformation efforts fail due to lack of engagement. Therefore, according to the review company, “adopting BCM software can prove to be endlessly valuable: a rejuvenated, highly engaged team is more likely to help future pivots succeed.”

Leaders is the category for business content management products that are rated highly by G2 Crowd users and have substantial scale, market share, and global support and service resources. Google Drive, Box, Quip, Hightail, and Citrix ShareFile are named Leaders.

High Performers is the category covering products that have earned strong customer satisfaction marks but have not yet achieved the market share and scale of the vendors in the Leader category. Dropbox Business is placed under the High Performers category.

Contenders is another category representing products with significant market presence and resources, but their products have received below average user satisfaction ratings or have not yet received a sufficient number of reviews to validate themselves. SharePoint and Microsoft OneDrive for Business are chosen as contenders.

Niche products, the last category, is for the products that have been rated favorably on customer satisfaction but have not yet received enough reviews to validate their success. Under this category. Niche products include Egnyte, ownCloud, and Bitrix24.

Why is Business Content Management So Important?

Actually, Business Content Management category is the new kid on the block as G2 Crowd added this category under the Content Management Systems umbrella which covers two other major categories: Enterprise Content Management and Web Content Management. The review company views these products as vendors’ answer to the digital transformation. Typically, they are designed to centralize an open workspace for unstructured content, provide collaboration to maximize depth and quality, help structure workflows, and reduce turnaround time on edits.

This space is important to provide true collaborative content so teams can keep up with their flowing waterfall of ideas and insights. Although thousands of companies worldwide are not optimally managing content, the realization of the need is growing. In fact, the global enterprise content management market, including software products in BCM and other business content tools, has been estimated to reach $63 million by 2022 growing at 23.4% CAGR during 2016-2022, according to Research and Markets.

Although some products were introduced in the space during the late 1990s, the arrival of Box in 2005 marked the turning point in the market and brought a wave of innovations. As a household name in file storage, Dropbox, introduced its own team-focused file sharing software. Google soon did the same with Google Drive's embedded collaboration features. Eventually, Microsoft offered two major players in the space: OneDrive and SharePoint. In addition, Bitrix24, ownCloud, and iAnnotate Enterprise are newcomers to the market. In the graph below, the vertical axis lists the number of BCM solutions available on the market and the horizontal axis lists the number of years each product has been on the market.

According to CrunchBase data, more than $1.6 billion has been raised for leading BCM vendors. More than $500 million was raised in 2014 alone, mostly by Box and Dropbox. Dropbox, Box, and Hightail have raised the most capital to date. Users can find each company’s total funding, according to CrunchBase, below. The vertical axis demonstrates the number of investment dollars, in millions ($), each vendor has raised.

Key Benefits of BCM

BCM platforms reduce turnaround time while allowing users to chip away at several projects at once due to the convenience of a single interface.

Organizations may hire the best individuals but without teamwork, nothing gets effectively done in time. BCM platforms level the playing field and uncover the boundless value of constant interactions.
BCM products keep organizations’ content secure and help them control who can view, download, and edit various files.

Centralize team’s content cycle with a number of tools and optimize workflows by minimizing the risk of a missed deadline or exhausting pileup of to-dos so teams know exactly who’s working on what and what to prioritize.

In the report, G2 Crowd also suggests the buying considerations below for BCM software:

File Type Compatibility

Review, markup, and version control

Collaboration features

Interface aesthetics

File security

Mobile Access

BCM solutions are no longer just about sending attachments over email or breaking an oversized file down into separate components. They also offer cloud storage and robust security but more importantly when implemented properly, a BCM platform can catalyze a wealth of invaluable interactions so employees feel more engaged while feeling less frustrated and hesitating when it comes to collaboration.

Venus Tamturk

Venus is the Media Reporter for CMS-Connected, with one of her tasks to write thorough articles by creating the most up-to-date and engaging content using B2B digital marketing. She enjoys increasing brand equity and conversion through the strategic use of social media channels and integrated media marketing plans.